Ralph Kirsch

Abstract

Emeritus Professor Ralph Kirsch was a distinguished, well-known and much admired medical personality in South Africa and internationally. His eminence is founded on a lifetime of contribution and achievement in the arena of internal medicine, liver research, medical education, administration and leadership. He served South African health sciences at the highest professional, organisational and institutional levels.

A 1964 medical graduate of the University of Cape Town (UCT), he obtained his MD in 1968 for his studies on malnutrition, and the FCP (SA) in 1970. In 1972 and 1973 he was a Fogarty Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Division of Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York – this appointment cementing his lifelong interest in chronic and acute liver disease (refer to Terblanche and Saunders – obituary SAMJ, this issue).

His scientific and research career spanned many topics. He published in such fields as the modelling and regulation of protein metabolism, ‘ligandin’ and the glutathione transferases, the role of fibrin(ogen)-derived products in disease, angiotensin-converting enzyme, viral hepatitis, hepatic iron and liver injury, portal hypertension and porphyria. His prolific research was documented in several hundred papers in international medical journals, and many chapters in books. He was awarded a DSc (Med) from UCT in 1993 for his work on metabolic and clinical aspects of liver disease and especially for his work on ligandin and fibrinogen metabolism.